In Love and Loss
by funnyhowthatis
Summary: Major character death. One shot following Delphine's grief immediately following Cosima's death.


**Author's Note:** I found myself overcome by Delphine emotions after 2x09, and this is what happened as a result. I haven't really written anything in a while, so I'd love to know your thoughts!

* * *

This is like gripping walls and gripping floors and holding your own body and she feels herself falling to the ground. Everything has been ripped away. Everything.

She pulls at her hair. She can hear her sobs ricocheting off the walls. She can feel her sobs shaking her body.

She can't look at the bed. She can't look at –

_Someone is next to her. Sitting with her. Being with her. _

_"__Delphine, I –"_

_A pause._

_"__Delphine, I know how much she meant to you. I know how much you loved her. I'm sorry I didn't – I should have - I wish I had trusted you sooner."_

_Sarah. Sarah acknowledging what no one seemed to believe. She can feel her body grow warmer, and this doesn't help the pain, it doesn't make the pain anything less, but having her there…_

_Looking up to see the way Sarah's face is stricken by tears too. Trusting her enough to share her tears. Trusting her enough to share the pain._

Delphine looks up and leans back against the wall. From here she can see the bed, and she can see the outline of – she can see the shape of –

She can see the emptiness of the air that took Cosima's last breath. She can feel her phone in her pocket and she knows she should call someone, anyone, but she can't.

_A soft embrace around her legs. Big eyes staring at hers, through hers. How can she understand? She is so young, and yet Delphine knows that she understands, completely._

_"__I drew something for you."_

_The little hands holding the paper waver, and Delphine takes the paper with hands wavering even more._

_"__Thank you," she barely manages to say. She looks at the drawing of her and Cosima holding hands through the tears falling from her eyes to the bottom of the page. She looks back up and – "Thank you, Kira."_

_She looks back down. At the top of the page, in messy writing Kira had written at the top: FOR AUNTIE DELPHINE. _

_And the sobs come in even stronger waves, but they are bearable._

_She holds Kira tightly in her arms._

This can't be real. It couldn't be real. The knowing as soon as the door opened. The running to the bed. The shaking. The calling out, the screaming, the shrieking, the anything, anything. The holding her and feeling instantly that she was not there.

She had stepped out for a moment. It was only a moment.

And then the crying into Cosima's chest.

And then her own collapsing.

And then her own falling apart.

_The door opens and she looks up._

_"__Felix."_

_"__Delphine."_

_But none of the tenseness is there. And the look in his eyes – that for every time he had spat her name out with such poison and venom, he was sorry. He was sorry and now he said her name in a desperate attempt to soothe a wound he knew no one would be able to soothe._

_They stay together for hours, just the two of them. She watches him break down too._

_In those hours the only thing she remembers is him, his voice cracking several times, saying, "You were really good for her. Not the monitor spy shit. But you – you were really good for her. She loved you, Delphine. And she couldn't stop loving you, even when we told her not to."_

_She closes her eyes and hears that over and over. Refuses to hear anything else._

She spent so long trying to keep herself together. As Cosima got sicker and sicker, after Aldous – after Rachel – through it all, she kept herself focused, directed. It was the only way to push away the reality. And now –

She feels all of it wash away and she is left with herself and her fears. Her greatest fears.

She cradles her head as her greatest fears come crashing down around her.

_Mrs S defends Sarah. Mrs S picks up Kira and embraces Felix and right now Mrs S walks through the door of the lab, her face tense. She walks directly over to where Delphine has collapsed on the floor and picks her up just enough to hold her. She holds her and whispers soft things through her soft curls. Delphine can only make out the word "love" repeated over and over and she understands that this does not make her unique, but someone is holding her and tracing her back and calling her "love." She is collapsing into someone stronger and older and the word "love" gently pulls her away from the darkness of her own mind. She can be weak in these arms. She can be a young girl, a child, in these arms._

_She cries and cries and can't stop shaking and part of it is – does she dare say it – she feels forgiven. _

_She feels like all of this –_

And after all of this she is holding herself.

The floor and the walls and the lights are all growing colder.

It will be another hour before she can control herself enough to call someone.

And those someones will come and hold each other and she will stand off to the side, wondering how her legs are working, how they could possibly be holding her up, how it was even possible for her to compose herself enough to look like she wasn't falling away in pieces.

She will watch from the side and catch their lingering glances.

Pity? Is it pity?

Is it blame?

For now she will postpone the call. And she will pretend that the someones who will come will see her for who she truly is in this moment. A woman in love. A woman in loss.


End file.
